Bad Wolf

My woke take, as someone who has worked in both a public library and a school library, is that we desperately need both more books that are at a higher reading level but a less mature subject matter, and more books that are at a lower reading level but a more mature subject matter, because 8 year olds who are advanced readers are still 8 year olds and don't want to read about graphic violence and torture, and teens and adults who have learning difficulties or who are just later readers for whatever reason are still teens and adults and don't want to read about Billy the Bunny going to school or whatever the hell.

Shoutout to people in the notes also mentioning people learning the language, I should've mentioned that really, given that I've been stuck reading German picture books myself while learning German.

I agree! In English second group of books are called Hi-Lo: High interest, low reading level, specifically advocating for adults with low literacy / poor English skills who still want to read books for adults. Gemma Open Door for Literacy is specifically a nonprofit program/publisher that publishes books for this demographic. If you are a librarian or have sway at your library, consider ordering a collection of these!

"I love you but you're doing wrong in a way I cannot condone" and "I hate you but you're being wronged in a way I cannot stomach" are top tier and I need more of them.

Nobody has ever been capable of writing a scathingly harsh and well formulated satire about the perils of modern capitalism, that doesn't just get immediately one-upped by some random food service worker talking about their actual week.

10000 YEAR OLD ROCK ART OF GIRAFFES FOUND IN LIBYA LET'S GO

we need swimmable cities 

dont worry. we will soon

"convince your followers that their Oppressor Class (whether real or imagined) is less deserving of human rights" is the oldest and most reliable trick in the book to incite mass violence, and you're not immune to it because you're a Good Person with Correct Opinions. you will continue to be a potential breeding ground for fascist thought until you stop dehumanizing people in any context, regardless of whether they deserve it or not, or how serious you are. there can be no acceptable targets.

Pretty sure most genocides in history, including the Holocaust, were justified with "we're punching up." 🤣 "We're killing our oppressors" has always been a convenient excuse to justify atrocities.

It's pretty much the standard thing, it couples in with the 'X group is simultaneously stronger than us and weaker than us' view that is used to justify all forms of hate.

it’s so special to me that so much of fan culture is textual analysis for the love of the game. like thank god there are people in my phone who are also thinking about this thing i love so much that they are writing transformative fiction as character studies and setting clips of the show to music with theme-relevant lyrics and writing long text posts analyzing every line of dialogue like!! yay!!!